How Do You Self-Motivate?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I started reading a book about Stoicism on Kindle Unlimited. It’s interesting stuff. Some things you’ve heard before (focus on what you can control) but I’m seeing that concept a bit differently this time around. The idea of being attentive and intentional about what you can control. I made a list of everything I can control right now. It was pretty long.

I was also thinking about my favorite poem, Rudyard Kipling’s If. Is that not a Stoic manifesto?

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating…

Also makes me think of a line from my favorite Buddhist poem which I have had sitting framed in my bedroom for years

Lift to the heights, or hurl me
Sheer down the steep abyss
I shall not laugh for that
I shall not weep for this

Sangharakshita

42

1 min or 1-inch at a time.

43

A few things that work for me;

Manage energy not time. So alternate between tasks that feel fulfilling and those that feel draining.

Keep reminding yourself that action, no matter how small, most often precedes motivation.

Just start. Anywhere. With anything. No matter how small.

My ‘to do’ list is in pencil, erasing items seems more rewarding to me that scratching them out. The motivation to get the last couple of items off that page, really helps me complete the list in it’s entirely. Something that’s always been a struggle for me.